


Patterns of Migration

by goodnicepeople



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Family, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Weddings, deals a lot with mortality but there is no death, promise!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 01:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/pseuds/goodnicepeople
Summary: Magnus builds a house. Angus finds a home. Migration brings things back, in turn.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a doozy! I am posting this in parts - but never fear - it is complete, save some needed editing on my end. I anticipate having the entirety posted over a short span of time.
> 
> Once again as per the tags: this is about Angus growing up, and the passage of time, but there's no death. Also, both Angus and Magnus have a fair amount of anxiety surrounding having and keeping a family, and there are references to Angus' prior family being emotionally neglectful. This sounds oddly grim... it is not! I hope!!!

Angus erases another tick mark from his journal. There are now, including himself, six people left on the moon.

It had been somewhat of a swift exodus, following all the destruction left in the Hunger’s wake. An antsiness, perhaps, to put a great deal of strife behind them. To have two feet solid on the ground.

Angus keeps somewhat of a ledger. He isn’t quite sure why, but he carries it in his breast pocket and checks it obsessively. Perhaps it is reflexive need to note and track. A knee-jerk, childish fear of being the last standing. A desire to understand where it is that people go, and who they go with, and how it became so easy for them to know. Angus, for once in his short but remarkably well-informed life, has no idea.

Magnus knows this, too. There are five people on the moon, besides himself, and that makes six people, all in all. And Taako is leaving tomorrow. Off to see the world, or something like that. Travel on his own terms, no running, no ramshackle caravans. Magnus paces around like a cattle dog at their heels, herding and corralling. Rarely out of their sights. Six people left, tomorrow there will be five. Including himself. Counts it again. Circles again.

Taako kisses Angus in the middle of his forehead and promises he’ll always pick up if he calls. He watches as Taako allows himself to be embraced by Magnus, the uncomfortable little divots in his cloak beneath Magnus’ fingertips as he holds too tight.

“T-travel safe,” Magnus manages, a little too loudly for the empty, echoing space.

“Not in a million years, bub,” Taako drawls, and then salutes, and is gone.

Angus erases a tick in his ledger. Magnus folds down a finger. There’s a space for them to say something, anything, but neither do.

\--------------

Magnus has a surprisingly small amount to take away from the moon base, all together. He packs it all into two bags, and it only takes as long as it does because Magnus sits to consider every single item as he picks it up and packs it carefully, carefully. Bookmarks he’d carved from scrap wood and meant to give to Merle for his kids. Braided lines of twine left behind in his room, courtesy of Taako’s nervous hands, twisting up spare bits found on Magnus’ desk as they talked. Magnus holds onto everything and thinks, it isn’t enough. This doesn’t encompass the life I had here.

Perhaps not those exact words in that configuration, but that is the enormity of the thought: it isn’t enough. This doesn’t feel like what we lived.

All the same, there is a plot of land waiting for Magnus planetside with a small cottage he can easily expand, and an old barn that’ll make a fine workshop and he thinks, I ought to be excited about that, or at least tell people I am.

“You should see what I’m gonna do to my new house,” he tells Angus in the now eerily-large, too-empty dining hall. To make it a habit, he supposes.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m excited,” Magnus says and tries not to let it sound rote.

“I suppose I’ll go to Neverwinter,” Angus says, spearing a wilted-looking piece of lettuce on his fork.

“Is that where your family lives,” Magnus asks, his voice thin - like wind hissing under a door - belying his nonchalance.

“No,” Angus answers. “But all the same. They don’t know who I am anymore.”

“Yeah. Right.” Magnus intones hollowly. He watches Angus chew and swallow and politely push around the rest of his dinner. _Now_ , Magnus thinks. _Say it now. Now._

But as he opens his mouth, Angus chirps,

“But I have money and Lucretia has helped me find something, I think.”

“Oh, great,” Magnus deflates. “That’s great, Ango.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t miss me too much, huh?” he teases, but the words are tinged with something unappealingly, genuinely earnest, and it sours them both in ways they don’t know how to express, so Angus says,

“Actually, I think I’m going to leave tomorrow.”

“Yeah?”

Angus nods, not looking up from his dinner.

“Nice, Angus, good for. Good for you.”

“Thanks, sir,” Angus answers. And then wonders if someone will erase a checkmark for him when he leaves, or if he’ll depart as quickly and quietly as he came.

Magnus is generous, if quiet, as he carries everything Angus owns to the hangar the next morning. Unlike Magnus, Angus is departing with tomes of books and notes and research and needs all the help he can get wrangling the heavy trunks into the back of his cannonball.

“Don’t forget my number, Ango,” Magnus titters, hovering near the open capsule as Angus settles himself in and fastens the belt over his lap.

“I know it, sir, don’t you worry.”

Angus watches his face fall.

“Oh, Angus,” Magnus says, almost longingly, his voice as brittle as bone. One hand pressed up against the glass siding of the vehicle as if Magnus is thankful and resentful of its barrier. “When are you gonna stop calling me that?”

“Sorry, s - ” Angus chokes off the reflexive habit mid-sound. He nods once. “Goodbye, Magnus.”

“L--love you, kiddo,” Magnus stammers as the capsule ceiling closes above him and seals. Angus hears Avi’s voice over a speaker, assuring him he’s next up on the launch, and to hold tight.

Breathe, Angus tells himself. You are fine. As you’ve always been.

What does it matter if that home in Neverwinter was a lie? No, not a lie. A diversion. All great detectives know when to shift focus, blur the truth. He has money. He will be fine. As he’s always been.

Eyes closed. Count down. There will be speed, and darkness, and then you’ll be back to the life you used to lead, just as you were meant to, Angus McDonald. _Thump thump thump_. Breathe. Noises are normal, Avi wouldn’t let you --

_Please! Stop! Stop the -- don’t fire!_

Angus eyes snap open, his heart thudding in time with open-palmed slaps against the vessel. Magnus’ stricken-looking face through the glass. Angus reaches reflexively, nervously, for the wand hung around his neck.

Avi darts past, releasing some sort of clamp, and the cannonball top peels up and open as it always does, Magnus barely evading being jammed in the chin by a rising piece of machinery. Angus undoes the seat belt with trembling hands.

“Are you - ” he begins, but Magnus has already jolted forward, throwing his arms around Angus.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mutters into his shoulder. “Angus, I almost let you _leave_.”

Angus feels an immense amount in a very short span of time, all crashing into him at once. It’d batter him straight back if not for Magnus holding him fast. A barrage of thoughts he cannot express, his head foggy and full. A reflexive thought: this is your fault, somehow. Another: he came back for _you_.

“I - I don’t understand,” Angus whimpers, the breath all but crushed out of him.

“Don’t go alone. Angus! This is - ! Why - why would you -- ”

“I’m not alone, sir,” Angus lies with all the fortitude of a soggy paper bag. It is evident to the both of them instantly.

“Come home with me. _Please_ come with me. I’ve wanted to ask for - for - shit. I mean, _shoot_.”

Magnus pulls back to look Angus in the face at arm’s length, his knobby little knees pressed foolishly against the edge of the cannonball as Magnus holds him aloft. In a moment of clarity - the way that Angus’ mind can often see things most sharply when backdropped by a whirl of confusion and action - the whole situation strikes him as being both laughable and, more secretly, wonderful. Like a scene out of his books, and Angus is the protagonist you can’t bear to lose.

“I have a house and I want you to be there,” Magnus says. “Please. I’ll make it… good. I won’t be stupid. I’ll try not to.”

Angus laughs at that, the sound loud and almost tumbling out of control, propelled by a profound release.

“Yes, Magnus,” he answers.

“Really?”

“I - ” and Angus closes his eyes and reminds himself that wanting to be wanted - willfully against a nervous, loathsome self-judgement - has so far only given him a life better than he could have ever anticipated.

“Yes,” he says with more conviction. “I want to.”

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Magnus sighs, embracing Angus again, clearly too relieved to be wary of language anymore. Holding him tight but without desperation; joyful this time, swinging him as Angus laughs, but big arms still careful, careful around his ribs. “I was afraid to ask.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t,” Angus retorts, gently. He feels, rather than hears, Magnus’ laugh rumbling in his chest.


	2. Snapshot

Angus shouts with laughter. A bubbling little shriek that starts in his chest and rings like a clear, high bell. Overflowing, tumbling, jostled out of him as he’s tossed over Magnus’ shoulder. Dizzy as he dips and turns and spins and drops.

Even now Angus catalogues himself: Angus would be scared, Angus would be embarrassed. Grass-stained knees and bleary eyes, pricked with hot tears both from delight and disbelief. This loud Angus, this Angus who can’t recall what time it is, who didn’t memorize the directions home. He’s never met this Angus before and does not, as he thought he might, detest his very existence.

Neither does Magnus, who grins so wide it threatens to split his whole face open. The plank of his forearm solid under Angus’ solar plexus as he careens around, Angus almost uncomfortably breathless from the pressure and the laughter. He feels like he has come unfixed and things are bound to catch up to him. That, like when you spin so fast the world trails behind you even when you stop, it crawls to a stop sometime, and the world rights itself in your vision and you are meant to carry on as before.

Someone will grab his wrist, a thumb pressed uncomfortably into the soft flesh where his pulse hammers away under his skin, and they will hiss, Angus, this isn’t like you, you’re acting like a _child_.

But it never comes and it never comes and it never comes and Angus feels safe tucked underneath Magnus’ arm as the sun tips beneath the horizon and they trudge home, boots scuffed and dusty. And over time, too, he doesn’t feel guilty, either. He reacquaints himself with Angus; this Angus who has a loud laugh.


	3. Landmarks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brief but not particularly graphic mention of blood here!

“Angus, wake up.”

Angus startles, reaching instinctively for his nightstand. Settled by a heavy hand landing on his shoulder. Angus exhales, feels the mattress shift under Magnus’ weight as he leans across him, until there are glasses being pressed gingerly into his palm.

“Magnus, you scared me,” Angus yawns, eyes sliding back into focus, only to reveal a face that looks less than chagrined. Beaming, even.

“The ducks are back, Ango,” Magnus says, a little breathlessly. His hair windswept and cheeks a little ruddy from the air outside, bringing a bit of that crisp smell of almost-summer in with him on his clothes. Magnus likes early mornings. Sunshine creeping through the treetops and fog still rolling off the lawn. But Magnus likes most things, and most notably, the ducks.

“Gone for the winter, I guess,” Angus remembers Magnus had huffed, fists shoved in his coat pockets, the weather just tipping from crisp to cold. Angus blew into his hands and watched the air bloom white in the cup of his palm. He’d seemed upset; something vaguely mournful, like he’d lost something precious. Angus shrugged.

“They’ll be back,” Angus proffered, gently. And Magnus took his hand and said nothing else.

That had been some time during their first few months together. After so long knowing each other it was strange that it still managed to feel like they were reacquainting themselves all over again. But Angus notes landmarks like dog-earing pages in a novel.

The first:

The first five days in Magnus’ - _their_ \- new home, Angus wakes up early and cleans with an almost fervent compulsion, hands-and-knees in the kitchen before the sun comes up, or spends so long flattening out the creases in his neatly-folded bed sheets that he starts to lose feeling in his fingertips. He eats exactly the amount he’s been served, whether it’s too much or not enough, and feels too guilty to tell Magnus that the shutters on his windows blow open and bring in cold night air. To ask for anything would be to upset the delicate ecology of this kindness he’s been shown and Angus figures it isn’t worth the rejection.

On the morning of the sixth day, some time around six in the morning, Angus glances up from his dustpan at a pair of threadbare maroon socks and falls back against the leg of the kitchen table with  a strangled gasp.

“Angus…” Magnus begins, sounding cold, and Angus instinctively slaps his hands over his ears.

Magnus crouches down before him but Angus cannot, cannot chance a glance upward. Is afraid to meet an expression full of mockery or disappointment. He reaches out and rubs small circles into the sharp hunch of Angus’ shoulderblades.

“I knew something was up…” Magnus muses gently. “I knew it was too clean in here.”

“I’m sorry,” Angus falters, his own voice ringing disorientingly loud in his ears. “I wanted to - to _do_ something. I don’t do anything.”

A long pause. Magnus settles cross-legged on the floor in front of him, Angus still crowded up against the kitchen table like a frightened rabbit.

“Are you afraid of me,” Magnus asks plainly. Such a terrible, gut-wrenching, shameful question and yet he asks without ire. Angus brain unravels as such, in this order, and lightening fast: he is not afraid, but he is, but not of Magnus, but of the house, maybe, and of the promise of a future, and of uncertainty, and what will be expected of him, and how he will fail it, and how much worse it will be when it happens in the future instead of now.

“You live here, Angus,” Magnus says. “I -- that’s gonna happen. For as long as you want.”

“I wanted to follow the rules,” Angus explains unhelpfully, his tongue still feeling too leaden to explain the parameters of where he once lived, how approval teetered on the edge of seemingly inconsequential matters.

“ _Uhh,_ ” Magnus replies ungracefully, sitting on the vowel long enough that it almost makes Angus laugh. “I don’t. I think… Did I make rules?”

“No, sir. Magnus.”

“I don’t… wanna?”

“I like rules,” Angus explains, bashfully.

Magnus scoops Angus up into his arms easily. The windows are still a hazy dark purple, the sun barely rising. Magnus begins to walk back down the hallway, past Angus’ room and towards his own.

“You - you don’t -- Magnus -- ”

“Shh, shh.”

His voice is like something mundane and comforting; the sweep of his broom across the back stone stairs, the hiss of water in the sink while they cook.

Magnus toes the door of his own room open and slips inside, laying Angus back against the mattress. It all smells like cedar wood and resin and Magnus’ hair and the sweet, musty tang of the old wool blanket Magnus pulls up around his shoulders and tucks beneath his knees. Angus feels something untangle in his chest. He closes his eyes.

 

Another page:

Angus likes to touch Magnus’ face. Three months in and he still almost doesn’t seem real; the sound of him down the hallway every morning, the high, elated laugh he all but giggles when they walk a stray dog into their home. It is foolish and immature, but still, Angus sometimes sits nestled under Magnus’ arm and marvels up at how unguarded Magnus seems. And he traces a finger over the slope of his brow, or down the plane of his large, flat nose.

“Nothing under there but my stupid skull,” Magnus laughs, but it isn’t the construction of him that fills Angus with a palpable, relieved sort of adoration so much as the immense openness spelled so plainly across his face in every moment. Surprise and elation and even sadness in turns, and Magnus seems unable to disguise any of them. No traps to be laid. No heavy sighs and pointed looks to decode. When Magnus says, _I love you, shortstuff,_ Angus’ brain is a decoder ring, a map and key, a cryptex protecting a lockbox. Why would you say that, why now, and here, what do you need?

But his face - bright eyes and missing tooth and high full cheeks - says exactly what he promises.

 

And also:

“Can I, papa?” Angus asks excitedly, legs swinging off the side of his bed. It has been five months and though Angus is adorned with nicknames, Magnus has always been Magnus. With a strangled gasp, Angus presses his knuckles into his lips, mashing them against his teeth, willing the word back, back until he can swallow it down. But Magnus keeps digging around beneath Angus’ bed until he finds the box he was looking for.

“Yeah, Ango, ‘course,” he replies, snaking out from under the bed, brushing dust off his forearms like nothing extraordinary had just occurred.

Angus knows Magnus heard him. He knows he could’ve said something. But, Angus also supposes, Magnus doesn’t know that Gregor McDonald, who Angus will grow up to look remarkably like but be unable to be recalled by, had only ever been addressed as “sir.”

Angus does not remember the question he’d been asking, but he does recall the silly way Magnus wrapped his hand around Angus’ ankle and jostled it until he smiled.

 

Six months, more bookmarks:

Magnus is not untroubled, either.

Angus thinks that might be a kind way of putting it. Perhaps Magnus needs the sort of help Angus cannot offer. He knows Magnus would flatly refuse it, all the same.

The pacing, and the worrying. Tugging nervously at the hair at his temple as he casts furtive glances out of the windows into very, very dark and quiet nights.

How sometimes he says goodbye to Merle, who pats the dog’s head goodbye and whistles as he waddles down the path, and a stricken look passes over Magnus’ face. Racing out of the door and wringing his hands as he hovers at his side. Sorry, sorry, just wanted to say goodbye again. A nervous laugh. And stutteringly, contrite, love you, Merle. Okay. See you.

It’s a new Magnus; one Angus does not recognize from the the proverbial gun-slinging days of the Bureau. How then, facing insurmountable trouble with so much to lose, Magnus cast himself aside with a willful, almost gleeful recklessness. But how now, with so much to keep, Magnus sees it slipping through his fingers with frightening clarity.

 

A bookmark he thinks it best to forget, but cannot:

Magnus makes a choked noise of something like frustration, but higher, more alarmed, like an animal caught in a trap. There is a sharp, short sound, like a spell misfiring, and then a light clatter in the sink, like ice pattering against the windowpane.

Angus sees the red blossoming in Magnus’ palm, slowly overtaking his closed fingers, dripping down his wrist. The broken glass all but disintegrated in his grip.

“Magnus!” he shouts, leaping to his feet.

“S-stop,” Magnus barks, with a frightening, low urgency in his voice that Angus has not heard in a long time. “Don’t look.”

“You need help,” Angus protests, reaching for a rag, but Magnus turns and fixes him with a glare that is both pitiful and frightening; feral, almost, in its unhappy, furious desperation. Angus backs away and curls up, small, in a chair by the fireplace.

Later, Magnus threads a hand in Angus’ hair - not the freshly-bandaged one, but still battered and scarred in its own time - and exhales for so long that Angus briefly fears he’s stopped breathing altogether.

“I’m sorry,” he says, at length. Angus inhales for him, empathetically.

“I don’t want you to - to think I could ever -- ”

Angus reaches up and curls his hand gingerly around the finger of Magnus’ injured hand.

“I don’t think that.”

Magnus’ breathing is uneven, like a skittering stone flung across pavement.

“I love you, shortstuff,” Angus replies, and feels pride, like he’d solved something impossible and sprawling and immense, when Magnus laughs. Nine months and Angus, for the first time, feels that he knows how to give something back.

 

And, too, Angus sometimes awakens to Magnus asleep in the armchair by his bookcase. Head pillowed in his palm. Breathing soft and even.

“Sometimes I just like to know you’re there, kiddo,” Magnus explains as he stretches out and cracks his shoulders and wrists.

It can’t be comfortable, Angus thinks, but understands that sometimes, in the blue-grey light of not-yet morning, things can seem far away and impossible in a way that closeness and consistency assuages.

He often pretends to be asleep for a little longer. So that Magnus can open his eyes first to the sight of a healthy kid in a well-made bed. And they’ll coordinate clumsy movements over breakfast - slide the sugar this way, dip under the trunk of Magnus’ arm to turn down the flame - and put on shoes and go to see if  the ducks have returned.  Angus trailing a pace slower, letting his shoes slot into the large footprints in the mud that Magnus leaves behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! This is liiiiike pages 1-13 of 30 something. About halfway there. More soon!


	4. Cycles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homecomings and weddings and departures, oh my.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Angus experiencing an anxiety attack, and a fair amount of sappiness.
> 
> This is a long one, but we're coming into the final third!

Taako returns after ten months having seen three continents and sixty cities, with six bags and two boxes, Kravitz, and an engagement ring in tow.

Angus feigns surprise, not meant to know Taako had been seeing anyone in secret. He had patently pretended not to notice when Taako smelled of a different (and less, ah, _abrasive_ ) cologne, or was in a much cheerier mood than was warranted. Magnus feigns nothing, and splutters over his words for long enough to count on two hands. Merle says, “ _that_ shithead stole my arm” but otherwise seems enviably nonplussed, as Merle often is.

It hadn’t been their _intention_ , Kravitz politely (nervously, defensively) detailed. Taako had called him, suggested he meet him along the Sword Coast. Stay a night. It had turned into many nights, and many cities, and, suddenly - !

And with Taako’s reappearance, so the technicolor whirlwind of ‘life with Taako’ follows.

There’s a wedding to plan, and dinners to host, and Taako picking and pulling at attention when he craves it and casting it off when he’s tired of it. Magnus, boisterous and perpetually star-struck, ever the little brother, wants to be around Taako constantly. This Angus notes with not a fair amount of…

Well, he wouldn’t call it jealousy. He adores Taako, too, and knows Magnus’ affections are not ones likely to run thin or burn out. But a sort of protectiveness of their small life together, the routine, the daily ins-and-outs and easiness of the quiet microcosm of Angus-and-Magnus. The first consistent thing in all his life.

Taako calls for Angus alone a lot, too.

“Can’t abandon your studies, little man,” he chides delightedly. Clearly thrilled to be stepping back into the role of cherished teacher. Kravitz politely tiptoes about and makes room for them both, sprawled out on the living room floor surrounded by books and odd bit and pieces of spell components, candles and chalk and a fair amount of chocolate sweets that have nothing at all to do with wizardry.

It does feel good. Or, _right_ , he supposes. Familiar and correct, in the way that exercising and sore muscles can feel right. Taako’s hard-won praise. Angus’ mind, whirring and ticking and _reaching_. Working hard. He isn’t rusty for long, and improves faster than he ever has. Angus feels a bit guilty for thinking Taako might’ve upended things for him in his life at all. Taako who is so quick and expects the world, which Angus wants to be good enough to provide. Who flicks Angus’ ear and reprimands, “do it again, _pupik_ , you can do better than that.”

Yes, I can, Angus thinks. I am. Better.

There’s a version of his life where he leaves the moon with Taako instead. Dons a long, purple cloak to match and sees three continents and sixty cities and eats desserts in every one, and learns magic and is _formidable_. Maybe Angus longs for it a little. Maybe his tongue feels a little swollen in his mouth when he waits for Magnus to go to bed so he can stay up late practicing spells by candlelight, because there’s something that twists up in Magnus’ face when he says, “did Taako teach you that?”

“ _Tch_ ,” Taako scoffs one day, the sound like a little pebble spit out between the gap in his front teeth. “Didja see what Mags sent?”

He proffers first a large, rolled up sheet of paper. Unfurled, it reveals a detailed graphite sketch. A rectangle, framed on one end by a curved, intricate thing, bars encircled by stalks of thorny roses.

“It’s beautiful, sir,” Angus says. “Is it a - ”

“It’s a bed he’s makin’ us for the wedding. Y’know. Now that we’re meant to _share one_ ,” Taako says this fondly but, mostly, with an air of _oh, doesn’t he know_. Magnus is a little foolish that way, Angus thinks. Agrees. Yes, it’s okay to laugh a little along with Taako.

“But lookie,” Taako says, and tosses him a card. Angus catches it out of the air, clapped flat between his fumbling palms. He turns it over.

_Taako and Kravizt._

_Taako_ is written somewhat confidently, even in Magnus’ characteristically loose, childlike scrawl. Squat letters with rounded tops. And then, _Kravizt_. Like a different person had written it entirely. Thin, and tall, the edges uneven as if done by a quaking hand. Meticulous, uneasy copying --

“Egghead,” Taako chuckles, just slightly south of mean. “Was he washing a dog while he rattled this one off?”

“I,” Angus begins, his voice tight. “I don’t think he knows how to write.”

Angus doesn’t look up from those careful, painful letters. Both embarrassed and fond. Fiercely, screamingly protective and, too, nauseous with the knee-jerk reflex to separate, to agree, this is silly, this is funny, Magnus would tell you himself what a dolt he can be!

Taako runs his tongue over his teeth in silence. Pondering this moment. Pondering a lot of other moments, spanning a long, long way back.

“It’s a gorgeous bed,” Taako says, after the pause. He snatches the loose envelope back from Angus and crushes it in his palm, and with a silent magic, it is gone. “Everything he makes is.”

Later, Angus wraps both of his arms around Magnus’ forearm and buries his face against the crook of his elbow.

“Can we read something tonight?”

Magnus beams down at him, raising his arm and lifting Angus off his feet briefly, feeling him clutch tighter to stay aloft.

“Yeah, Ango, let me finish with the dishes and - ”

“Will you read to me?”

Magnus puts him down. Pats his own hip sort of thoughtfully.

“You know I - ” he starts. And then, quickly, “You do it way better than me. You know who all the characters are and how they should talk.”

“I like when you do the voices,” Angus protests. “ _Please_ , Magnus.”

Magnus reads slowly, sometimes ploddingly. Rolling larger words around in his mouth like he’s trying to jostle meaning out of them. Sometimes Angus fills in those definitions and Magnus repeats it back under his breath, and pats Angus’ hand. Angus leans against Magnus’ shoulder and thinks, there is a reason there is only one version of your life, there is a reason you aren’t meant to change things.

\-----------------

Taako’s wedding is a grand affair. Those are Taako’s words, to be certain. _A grand affair, and wear your best, bucko._ But Angus thinks there’s little else you could use to describe it accurately.

In the preceding days, he helps Magnus tie white ribbons around the cut stalks of calla lilies, using his smaller fingers to hold down a knot as Magnus secures a tight bow. Or he sits and watches Magnus carve the last of the fine, nearly obsessive detail into an ivory bracelet Taako will wear as he walks down the aisle. Magnus had not been permitted to make the rings (“if you don’t leave me something to do, I think they’ll take my name of the wedding invitations,” Kravitz had protested with a measure of humor and not an unfair amount of desperation) but the bracelet was a permitted addition to Magnus’ myriad, enthusiastic wedding gifts. Angus thinks it’s a little charming. Magnus’ immense, near-suffocating desire to please is easier to admire when it’s turned towards others and Angus doesn’t have to debate his merit in deserving it.

The morning of, Angus catches Magnus scowling into the bathroom mirror, hands fumbling at the dip of his throat, thin fabric draped between his fingers gingerly like it threatens to tear.

“I can do that,” Angus offers, a little timidly. Magnus looks as bashful as he does relieved. He steps out and kneels; even then Angus needs to stand on tiptoe to thread the black tie around the back of his neck.

“I’ve never been to a wedding before,” Angus muses to fill Magnus’ nervous silence; a man who is rarely still and rarely looked-after. Angus smiles and adds, “but I’ve tied a lot of ties.”

“Ah, well, not all weddings have ties,” Magnus laughs, but a little distantly. “Sometimes you can just show up in your nicest shirt.”

“Not if you’re the groom, I’d imagine.”

 _“Especially_ if you’re the groom!” Magnus crows. “Then they let you get away with anything!”

Angus finishes knotting the tie in the silence that follows. Magnus claps him on the shoulder, the firmer _tap_ of Magnus’ wedding ring on his left ring finger felt even through his suit jacket. Angus thinks if there’s something he’s meant to say, he hasn’t read about it yet.

“You’re gonna have fun,” Magnus says as he stands, disguising a grunt of effort. “Today’s gonna be great.”

It is. Wonderful. Sunny and a little hazy, full flowers blossoming in the backyard behind Taako’s brightly-painted house. Merle’s arched humor throughout a lovely officiation, an impressive amount of tears courtesy of Magnus, but Kravitz too. (“I didn’t think he _could_ cry, ya know, bein’ a corpse n’ all,” Merle chortled. “Anyway, you may now kiss the uh, Taako.”)

Angus eavesdrops, as he is wont to do. A bad, learned habit, an insatiable desire to track and know. When the sky gets dark and the first dances are done and the cake has been eaten and people have peeled away to talk and drink, Taako finds Magnus by the birdbaths on the edge of their property.

Angus stands utterly still, unnoticed, and watches Taako dance fingers up Magnus’ spine until he squawks and laughs and shrugs away.

“ _Stoooop_ , you know I hate that,” Magnus whines, unconvincingly. Huge smile plastered on his face.

“So,” Taako drawls, eyebrows raised. “Thanks for all the shit you did to make this nice.”

“Yeah, I loved to do it, bud,” Magnus replies. “Happy to.”

“Got a lot to pay you back for,” Taako says. Pausing just long enough. “You know, when you… when _your_ wedding comes along. Taako the ‘ol indentured servant -- ”

“I don’t think so,” Magnus answers quickly, very quickly. His hand closes around his wine glasses. “I don’t. I dunno, Taako. I can’t… see…”

“Everyone’s gotta -- ” Taako begins, but quickly redirects his thought. “It’d be okay, you know. If you did.”

“Yeah,” Magnus answers.

“And we’d all be there to throw some fuckin’ flowers.”

“Yeah.”

“You can have someone,” Taako says, a little more insistently. “That’s okay.”

Magnus loosens the tie at his neck. Smiles, a little, and not in a way that disguises sadness but really _smiles_.

“I do,” Magnus says. “I’m gonna raise Angus.”

Taako knocks Magnus with his shoulder.

“Yeah, he’s gonna turn out right, huh?”

“He already is,” Magnus breathes, his face the very picture of relief, of prideful, genuine elation. Angus slips unseen back into the party, but feels something in his chest that chokes up his throat a little when he concentrates on it too hard. Killian scoops him up into her arms and dances with him, his legs swinging almost violently beneath them as she spins around the lawn. He doesn’t feel able to comprehend Magnus’ trust in him, pictures it like a small and precious thing he cannot see but knows is inside him, somehow. Is he meant to pry it out? Is Magnus certain it’s there at all? He closes his eyes and listens to the loud band music, the feeling of swaying, people laughing, echoing past dark treetops.

\-----------------

Angus doesn’t think of his parents often.

He never had, to be fair. Even then. Even when they lived under the same roof. What was there to think of? He knew their names, and their schedules, and the kinds of foods they preferred. He knew his mother liked plants, and terracotta accessories among the marble. He knew his father had an impressive collection of pocket watches and once let Angus see the inside of one. He knew what their family crest looked like, and that his parents were smart and very important and maybe a bit fearsome, in the way that when Angus walked alone down to the docks to enjoy the weather, the shipping workers would stand up straight and stop talking loudly and only address Angus as “sir."

It’s only really by the warmth of Magnus’ fireplace that Angus does occasionally think, my room was often cold. Or, they never asked if I’d eaten.

Magnus breathing softly, curled up knees-to-chest in the smaller armchair, insisting that Angus sit in the big one closer to the fireplace. Magnus asks a lot of questions. He answers a lot of questions, too. He could list Angus’ top five favorite installations in the Caleb Cleveland series, and in order of preference, no less. _That isn’t important_ , Angus’ brain chides, which it sometimes does. Logic, and reason. A familiar voice that follows him. _Why would you fill his head with useless nonsense like that?_

Angus doesn’t have an answer for that save, _it just felt nice_. And that pangs him with an embarrassed, loathsome twist of his gut.

His parents are still out there. They aren’t that far away.

He knows they’d look back at him all glassy-eyed and impassive if they saw him now. Just a boy on the street. Completely and entirely erased from their memories. It was so easy to do. The Director had said, do you need a moment Angus? But Angus had already dropped the paper into the Voidfish’s tank with what he’d thought was steely resolve but, really, may have been something closer to a fear of losing his nerve.

The guilt he’d felt, then. As The Director touched his shoulder. Knowing you, she said, and what you’ve already done for us. I’m sure your parents were proud.

Later in his new room on the moon, familiarly big and cold and full wall to wall with his books, he kicked scuff marks into his new shoes and pushed all the tears back into his eyes with the heels of his hands, refusing to let a drop fall. They didn’t notice. Months and his parents hadn’t called for him once. It was so easy. It was so easy. He was erased long before the Voidfish. What had he done wrong?

Magnus turns in his half-sleep, the small chair groaning beneath him. Scrubbing one hand over his face.

Angus gets up and closes himself in his room, cross-legged in the middle of his bed. Breathe and sit up straight. Good boy, Angus. Breathe and sit straight.

It seems, to him, he’s now lived both ends of the spectrum and neither are right.

My parents should have looked for me. It was three months. Three months, and nothing. If you’d been better. If you’d given them something to look after, maybe -- Magnus is proud of me. He says I have a great brain and a better heart. He tells me that, he _told_ me. He says I’m brilliant. By the standards of a man who can’t write his own name? Stop. Stop. Don’t say that about Magnus don’t say that about Magnus don’t say that about Magnus. These are _your_ thoughts, Angus, these are your barbed little judgements. Stop. He wants me here. You’ll hate him someday, too. Like you hate your parents. I don’t hate them. They should’ve been better. They weren’t cruel. I don’t know what I did. They didn’t love me, but they weren’t _cruel_ . Magnus could be, you’ve seen the way he shouts. He won’t. He doesn’t. They still don’t know you’re gone. They never will. They never will. I erased myself. To protect them. To protect _yourself_. You didn’t want them and they didn’t want you. Greedy. Selfish. You could’ve been better. You still could.

Angus opens and closes his fist around something soft, something light in his hand. He swipes wetness out of his eyes, making sure not a single drop falls. Feathers. Small, white feathers resting in the cradle of his palm. Curled up like little cats in a windowsill.

His pillow, ripped open on his lap beneath that.

“No,” Angus gasps, much louder than he should. The tear is significant. Right in the middle of the pillowcase. “No, no.”

Magnus will see. He could hide it, but Magnus would ask, wouldn’t he? Here in his own house, you idiot. You’re - what? Uselessly shoving escaped downy feathers back into the ruined pillow? And what will that solve? The logical voice Angus abides is right, it is always right, it was right when it said Magnus’ home was no place for him and it was right when it suspected the same sentiment politely shrouded behind tight-lipped smiles on the faces of the McDonalds.

Angus’ eyes settle on Magnus, already in the door frame. Tired eyes half-lidded, his mouth caught in an uncharacteristic frown.

“No,” Angus keens, louder. Unthinkingly. Like some petulant, wailing child. “Don’t - don’t look!”

“What’s wrong, little man?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Magnus settles beside him on the bed. Lifting the mess out of Angus’ lap. Angus’ little fingers clasp desperately around it as if to keep and destroy the evidence, knowing that once it is gone, he is incriminated, and that’s that. That’s it.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Angus rasps, past a clenched-up throat.

“Are you telling the truth?”

Angus tries to say yes, but nothing comes out. Angus raps his knuckles hard against the side of his head.

“Woah,” Magnus says, loudly enough that Angus startles and does it again, harder. _Not at the dinner table_ , _Angus_ , says that logical voice. _It’s so odd when you do that_.

Angus makes a terrible sound. One that feels more pulled out of him than actively produced. It sounds terrible, terrible, like an animal that you’ve kicked, or your stomach when you have to push fingers into it to keep it from whining in front of your parents’ guests. Angus doesn’t want to be a little boy. He doesn’t want to be taken care of. It hasn’t _worked_ before! It won’t work!

“What won’t work, Ango?” Magnus says, and Angus is mortified. What has he said aloud? Magnus’ hand cups his cheek. It squelches, a little, under his palm. Wet with shed tears. Falling into his lap. Crying like a child.

“We can cry, if you want,” continues Magnus. “I’ll do it too.”

“I’m s-so sorry,” Angus hiccups. “I don’t want to cry.”

“Are you angry?”

 _Yes_ , Angus thinks, with a frightening clarity. But the idea of it; the massive weight of reckoning with the notion that he’s angry at his family. The people who were meant to cherish him, the people who treated his accomplishments like checkboxes and never once could see, _wanted_ to see, that it was all so they’d turn their words kind and their hands soft and maybe sit by the fire once in a while, just once, the three of them all together…

Magnus seems to note the way Angus’ nervous eyes keep settling on the pillow he’s ripped. So Magnus holds it aloft and shreds the rest of the fabric, end to end, in one sharp tug.

“Ah man,” Magnus exhales, with a playful sort of reproach. “I guess there’s nothin’ to be done about that now, huh? Stupid Magnus.”

Later, when they’ve swept up the goose feathers, and Angus has changed his clothes, they settle again by the fireplace on the couch. Angus watches Magnus watching the snow falling outside the window. He watches Magnus, sometimes. Not with a logical sort of scrutiny, but because he likes the deep lines in his face, and how everything he thinks seems to play out in technicolor across his every feature.

“I used to do that too, y’know,” Magnus says quietly. “Except I’d hit my head into the wall. My dad said I was fixin’ to knock the whole place down sometimes.”

Angus tries to say something, anything, but finds he cannot.

“I was so angry. I didn’t even know about _what_ sometimes, but it’d just twist my guts up and I had to get it out.”

“I’m not angry,” Angus protests anemically. Magnus looks back at him with something in his gaze that is soft, something that is blissfully free of pity, but still palpably heavy with loving concern. He leans over and kisses the side of Angus’ head.

“Okay,” Magnus concedes, jostling Angus gently against his side. “But don’t bust up that brilliant head of yours. I don’t know how the next Caleb Cleveland book ends.”

\------------------

The day after Angus’ fourteenth birthday, a letter arrives in the mail inviting him to participate in a two-year anthropological study at the Waterdeep Institute of Arcane Studies. Magnus and Angus stare at it for a while. Angus reads it out loud a few times and his voice shakes, but just a little. Magnus’ hand lands heavy and warm on his shoulder.

“Does it sound… good?” Magnus questions. “I can’t -- they used a lot of big words.”

“It’s good, it’s -  _ah_ \- very good,” Angus replies. He folds up the letter.

When he’d erased the memory of his former life, he’d also sacrificed all the work he’d done for the Rockport police, his former clients, any reputation he’d built. He hadn’t minded, really. The Bureau was something that could help far more people in a reach he could never fathom as a single detective.

“They must’ve….” Angus begins. He takes off his glasses and rests them on the table in front of them so he can press his fingers into his tired eyes. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees one large hand carefully fold and pocket them. “I wrote a paper at school about the growing use of reliance on enchanted objects, rather than recreating their use wholecloth with a spell. They must’ve sent it to -- to someone, or. I’m not sure.”

Angus feels an alluring wave of pride, of immense joy, tempered by a fear he doesn’t wholly understand. He’s been away from home and family most of his life. It had always been easy, and he’d been good at everything he tried. And then, a childlike little part of himself pipes up, _would you pack all the little wooden animals Magnus made you? Would your coworkers make fun of you for them?_

“Even I know what ‘on-site housing’ means,” Magnus says, a hand reassuring on the back of Angus’ hunched neck.

They go that night to Merle’s for a slightly belated birthday celebration. Magnus hardly fits through the front door and Angus suspects Magnus doesn’t really fully sit down in their small dining room chairs, but there’s a calm that comes over Magnus when he’s around all of them that is almost palpable. Merle sneaks Angus a sip of moonshine when Angus announces the good news, and Angus coughs into a napkin for only a minute or two, which is better than when Merle offered him a sly drag off his pipe that one time. Mavis holds her head in her hands and Merle laughs so hard his face goes purple. All in all, it’s wonderful. It’s the sort of thing Magnus will recount among his happiest moments.

Merle and Magnus watch the kids playing by the ocean under a setting sun. Angus picks sand out of his sunhat and evades another spew of kicked-up muck under Mookie’s heels.

“When’s Angus shipping out,” Merle asks, which startles Magnus.

“A month,” Magnus answers. And then, clearing his throat, “if he takes it.”

“He’ll take it,” Merle half-chuckles, groaning as he stretches. “You see the way his eyes light up when he talks about uh, _field work_ , or whatever?”

“Two years is -- ” Magnus doesn’t know entirely what to say. “He’ll be sixteen. That’s so old.”

“Sometimes they learn best on their own. ‘Sides, he ain’t really your son, I don’t think you get to make that kinda choice,” Merle says, past a mouthful of sweet-smelling smoke. He taps his pipe against the chair of the arm as if to emphasize the point. This daggers Magnus in a way he knows Merle did not intend, but still, it pours out of his mouth faster than he can stop it,

“Great. Thanks. Advice from the world’s greatest dad.”

The crash of a wave. Mavis’ high voice, chastising something.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says. “I -- I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And I don’t -- that was really stupid to say.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Merle,” Magnus says, a little pleadingly. Laying a hand over his wrist. “I’m s-so stupid.”

“Nah, ya just spoke when ya should’ve thought. Gets the best of us, sometimes.”

“No, I mean. I mean…”

Angus is wading in the shallow water, trying to clean his feet. His pants rolled up around his knees. He doesn’t dress as nicely as he once did, letting his simple clothes wear down to threadbare the way that Magnus often does. Does he resent that? Would he have even said something, if he did?

“Angus has... he needs a life better than mine.” Magnus exhales. “Do you know what I mean?”

“So, let ‘im go to that fancy school.”

“I was never going to stop him,” Magnus says, insistently. “But I don’t think he’ll wanna come back.”

“Tide always rolls back in sometime,” Merle answers. He offers Magnus a pull from his pipe, and claps his knee when he politely declines, watching a tear splatter onto the front of his tunic. Privately, Merle thinks, _world’s greatest dad, indeed._


	5. Migratory V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! First order of business, there's discussion of death in this chapter (including a uh, murder quest, of sorts) but no major character death or anything graphic.

Two years is a very long time, Angus thinks as he unpacks his belongings into a small but lavish dormitory. His colleagues up late drinking wine after dinner and Angus, newly fourteen and still a people-pleaser, retired to bed. There’s lovely dark wood everywhere but none of it is carved and it feels so barren, so incomplete. Like someone hasn’t loved it enough to see what lives inside it, to free it with careful work and time.

He isn’t sure if he’ll be able to sleep. It’s odd without the sounds of someone else breathing from two doors down, or the pit-pat of dogs’ feet on the hardwood floors.

But Magnus calls, and Angus describes his new room in painstaking detail, and Magnus says, I love you, kid, I _love_ you, with such a conviction that Angus thinks he couldn’t be lonely if he tried.

Magnus visits, too, over the two years. Sometimes. It’s difficult and far away, and there are dogs and jobs and research to attend to. But Magnus visits, and is wide-eyed and appropriately awed by things Angus’ colleagues say even when he doesn’t understand, but echoes their praise tenfold. He pulls a sour face and whispers, “none of this wood is carved” when he sees Angus’ dorm, and brings new sweaters and shoes and notebooks every time.

“Was that your Dad?” a fellow researcher asks as Magnus departs that first time, Angus lingering on the front steps of the library just to watch his carriage disappear down the road. And Angus knows they do not look alike, or sound alike, and that Magnus says very little here among the academics and keeps his voice to an uncharacteristic whisper, but he answers “yes” with such pride it threatens to crack his chest wide open.

Angus writes letters, too. Affectionately. Painstakingly. And not without reason, of course. Knowing Magnus would never dare let a missive from Angus go unread carefully, every word picked apart and researched and lovingly read back aloud. He uses clean, white paper in as neat as hand as he can muster, even when his eyes are bleary and his hands are tired from a long day of hard, detailed work.

 _Sweet Ango_ , Magnus writes back.

_I bet everyone is proud of you there! Things sound hard but good and also important. Sometimes the dogs sleep on your bed and I think they miss you! Your pillows still smell like your soap._

_I bet I will have called you ten times before you get this letter which is why I think they kind of dumb but I hope you will still like it._

And then, beneath that, in Taako’s looping scrawl,

 _And we only broke one pencil in the process!  
_ _Love you, pumpkin._

Angus hangs the letter above his bed and touches its edges lovingly, carefully. The corners fold up when there’s humidity and Angus frets over it and fastidiously folds them back like it’s some sort of ancient document from his field work.

Coming home, when Angus is able to take breaks or put down his quill over holidays, is a sort of thrill that makes his knees bounce in the back of the carriage the entire journey. He knows how it goes, now. He can hear the dogs barking first, while he’s still halfway down the path. Magnus doesn’t wait for him to approach the doorstep. He meets him out by the oak tree, the one with Angus’ height notched into its side, and swings him up, up and into his arms, and his eyes are wet every time. How’d you get so big, Ango? Ango, it’s only been six months!

Big dinners with too much food for two and unwarranted presents, left wrapped on his bed. Because I missed you, bub, I missed you and I had all this time --

It’s all a little foolish, Angus thinks. To be treated this way at all. But he treasures it all the same with a sort of private ferocity that he can sense Magnus feels, too. Their small reunions like shining landmarks in their pasts and futures.

There had been a time years ago, returning from a case in Neverwinter, that Angus carried his small suitcase up into his quiet room at the back of the McDonald estate and closed the door and dusted his books and hung up his shirts and (secretly, lovingly) kissed the head of his old stuffed bear and heard his parents arrive home and thought, I don’t want to have returned just yet. Closed the door and stared up at the ceiling and waited to see if someone would knock.

They don’t know you’re home, Angus thinks.

Only because you don’t want them to know, another part of him argues, logically, pragmatically.

All the same. They never knock and are only vaguely surprised to see Angus at the table for breakfast the next morning.

Instead, his first time home from the university, he hears Magnus from his adjoining workshop say to a departing customer, “do you mind if this takes ‘til Wednesday? I know I usually only take the weekend, but my son’s home for a bit and I don’t wanna rush things.”

Angus doesn’t want to go to sleep that night. He stays awake long after Magnus has fallen asleep on the couch - which Angus deduces he does more often than not by the way the cushions dip and the dogs congregate and the pillows look more worn than before - and he brushes his thumb over the back of Magnus’ scarred knuckles and thinks of him waiting for Angus, waiting, waiting, sprinting out into the yard just to hold him --

The two years are long, and sometimes tedious, and often earth-shatteringly phenomenal.

On his final homecoming, Angus’ chin knocks the underside of Magnus’ jaw when he’s jostled into an embrace, and Magnus disguises a limp as he charges down the stairs.

“You’re so tall,” Magnus exhales, holding Angus at a distance.

“You too,” Angus ripostes gently. The old white Borzoi leaps up and rests paws on his hip, whining for Angus’ attention, allowing Magnus a moment to turn aside and wipe his eyes.

\---------------

There are things Angus knows about Magnus that Magnus does not say.

These are not hard to discern when you are a detective.

For instance, Magnus has not grown out of his sweet tooth. This is simple. Powdered sugar lingers by the lip of the sink many mornings following, Angus deduces, repeated midnight snacks. There’s always some sort of cake in the pantry following market days. Plus, he likes to share. Angus doesn’t see his bottom rows of ribs anymore when he looks in the mirror.

Magnus was once married. He still wears the ring. Sometimes in his sleep he says, _Julia_ , like you’d call out to a familiar person climbing into bed beside you. A hollow word, tinged with warmth.

Magnus was once very, very injured. Angus knows he shouldn’t pry here.

He does, though. All insatiable detectives do.

The name of the town; Ravensroost. A time before the Bureau. A name that seems to surface on Magnus’ tongue before it is quickly, almost violently extinguished. Magnus growing foggy, dizzy, reeling back into a chair. Reflexively grabbing for Angus -- too big for this now, knobby long legs hung uncomfortably off the side, but Magnus tearful and desperate all the same -- and pulling him into his lap as if some sort of fear seized him, sharp and icy in his gut.

A dark mood that arises every year around the same time. Sunken eyes and badly-muffled sobs. Everything he does as if through molasses, weighted down. It hurts Angus in ways he doesn’t have words for. So he researches. He asks questions. He follows lines of thought and makes conclusions and chases an answer until he can pin it through its ephemeral wings. A name emerges: Governor Callen.

Something else emerges: Taako grows quiet. Merle grows quiet. Angus deduces more than enough.

Angus helps Taako clear the table after dinner, cheerily sending Magnus and Kravitz off to play cards in the den. They follow his suggestion almost laughingly. Angus would perhaps think to be offended at their well-meaning condescension but is happy to see them gone nonetheless.

“So,” Taako needles, elongating the word teasingly. “What do you want?”

Angus nearly drops a wine glasses.

“I-I’m helping with the table, I thought?”

“Two years at some fancy college and they didn’t teach you how to lie better?”

“It -- well! I was doing field work, more than engaging in a classroom-setting learning environment,” Angus protests, as Taako clucks reproachfully.

“Fine. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but when someone comes back in -- ”

“Wait!” Angus concedes quickly, a touch pleadingly. “I wanted to ask -- and please tell me the truth…"

“Ah, don’t plan to start on _that_ today,” Taako interrupts, but Angus speaks over him.

“Are you and Merle leaving somewhere tomorrow?”

Taako stills. Puts down a plate and squares off with Angus across the table.

“Maybe so, maybe not. What’s it matter to you?”

“It’s just odd that Magnus doesn’t know.”

“How do _you_ know he doesn’t know?”

Angus raises an eyebrow pointedly, challengingly. Taako seems appropriately cowed.

“We don’t need to tell Mags everything. Do you tell him everything? Y’know, don’t answer that, you probably do, goody-two-shoes ‘n all…”

Fearing Taako may take this easy out to excuse himself, Angus crosses around the table in front of him.

“Is this about…” Angus clears his throat so that Taako looks directly at him, and, screwing up all his mettle, asks aloud a question he had only considered privately, silently, until now. “Is this about Governor Callen?”

Taako moves so quickly that Angus lets out a wholly childlike, embarrassing yelp. Taako’s bony hands around his biceps; sharp, pointed nails digging into his flesh. He pushes Angus back into the hallway behind the dining room and crowds over him.

“Who told you that name,” he hisses. His golden eyes look sharp and almost wild in a way that recalls Taako’s more vicious nature. “Angus!”

“No one needed to tell me,” Angus answers, maintaining a low voice as best he can. Taako keeps him corralled in the corner, unsatisfied with that answer.

“Don’t say it’s Merle.”

“No. Never.”

“Kravitz?”

“We don’t really speak alone.”

Taako falters. Presses a hand to the side of his neck, as if feeling for a pulse, like a portrait of a woman moments away from swooning, unconscious.

“Not Magnus,” Taako rasps, uncertainly, with a measure of fear. “He can’t. Right?”

“I wasn’t certain of that fact, but I suspected it to be true," Angus answers. Taako seems to loosen incrementally, his eyes still darting about, scanning Angus’ face for some sort of joke or deceit.

“With all due respect, sir,” Angus says, standing up a little straighter. “I’m a very good detective. Some would even say the world’s greatest.”

Taako huffs a short laugh as he steps back, allowing Angus some space. He crosses his arms tight against his chest and seems to pick up his figurative pieces with speed and expert practice, even if it is mostly a charade.

“Jeez, shortstop, ya got me all _fatootsed,_ ” Taako exhales, that characteristic lilt coming back to his voice. “Still. Don’t let Magnus hear you say that name.”

“Because he’ll be upset?”  
  
“Because he _can’t,_ ” Taako answers, and then waves his hands as if brushing the words out of the air, his bangles jangling loudly on his wrists. “Forget it. You shouldn’t be hearing any of this.”

“I’m not a kid,” Angus protests. “I’m sixteen, and Magnus is _my_ father.”

“Oh, _I’m_ sorry,” Taako drawls, sarcasm like a venom in his tone, “I forgot you get your license to kill in the mail at sixteen.”

Angus’ eyes must widen almost comically behind his glasses, because Taako makes a spluttering noise of protest before Angus even opens his mouth.

“Don’t,” he snaps, “say another word. You’re a smart-ass little snoop and you already know too much.”

“You’re really going to -- ”

“I _said_ not another word!”

“He hurt Magnus,” Angus retorts, plainly, as if pleading his case.

“Yes, well,” Taako hedges. “Yes. That’s -- yeah, that’s it.”

“And now you’re going to hurt him.”

“Yes,” Taako affirms, much quicker this time.

Angus steels himself and lowers his voice. “I want to come.”

“No, bubbeleh,” Taako says, with less bite than before. Angus notes - as he’s always compulsively noting - that Taako looks very tired. And, maybe for the first time in the entire time that he’s known Taako, a little older. “No. This isn’t for you.”

Angus draws himself up to his fullest height. He nearly comes up to Taako’s nose now and does feel a fair amount of something like pride at that. Taako, for his part, raises an eyebrow, jaw clenched tight.

“Yes, it is. I know who he is. I could help you.”

“We don’t need help.”

“You and Merle? I beg to differ.”

“Watch it,” Taako snaps, barely concealing a wicked little smile, as he always does when Angus shows a sharper side in private. “This isn’t your job. _Capiche?_ ”

“That isn’t fair,” Angus ripostes, trying to keep petulance out of his voice.

“Nothing’s fair! Thought I taught ya well enough to know that by now.”

“I -- I love him, too. I could help!”

“You can help. You will.” Taako butts his finger on the underside of Angus’ jaw affectionately. “You’re gonna stay with Magnus and you’re going to take care of him.”

“Taako,” Angus whines, attempting not to whine, but whining all the same. He’ll chastise himself later for sounding so much like a child. “Taako, that isn’t _enough_.”

“It is, pumpkin. It is. He needs it. I want you to promise me.”

Taako says that with such a lack of pretense. Without his usual breezy casualness, the practiced act of _neither-here-nor-there_. Sometimes it’s odd to think that Taako walks with two feet on the ground like the rest of them, when he seems to act like he’s happily hovering above it all. Anything that weighs him down. Tethers him to this planet. Those are few and far between. So they must be important, or difficult, the way that things you really love can often be infuriating to keep. Angus thinks he isn’t meant to pry into it with his usual, insatiable detective’s aplomb so instead he nods.

“Promise,” he mutters, as Taako pats his cheek.

It takes weeks for them to find a moment alone again, but Taako settles close to him on Magnus’ couch and whispers to Angus,

“It’s done.”

Angus nods, feeling a little frightened for reasons he cannot fully parse.

“Did you -- is he any different?” Taako asks, almost brusquely.

Angus isn’t entirely sure he understands the question. Taako must see perplexion written on his face, as he clarifies,

“I mean. Does he sleep better, or did he say that he _felt_ something, or…? Did you see?”

Angus looks towards Magnus, whistling through his teeth in the kitchen, wiping out dirty glasses as an old dog happily winds, over and over, through his legs.

“No, nothing,” Angus answers truthfully. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, pumpkin,” Taako says. He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth for a moment that feels to Angus almost spookily elongated. Laid bare and crackling with emotions he does not fully understand, destined to be caught in the amber of his memory. Taako so often like this; upset-but-not-upset. Distant-but-yearning. Maybe I’ll understand when I’m older, Angus thinks, and before Angus can say anything, Taako scoffs,

“Dunno why I asked such a stupid - ”

“Did Magnus know you were going to -- ah,” Angus interrupts, edging on panic. “You know. End him?”

“Yes and no. Too hard to explain.”

“He wanted it,” Angus says, less a question than a hopeful prompt.

“Yeah,” Taako sighs, almost longingly. “Badly.”

“Then… then I think we did something good! For Magnus.”

Angus likes conclusions. Angus likes proof. Angus likes mystery novels where the suspects all end up in the same room, and a confident detective can point an unwavering finger and bring someone to justice just like that.

“That’s right,” Taako says, and reaches over to pull Angus’ earlobe affectionately. “Done and done, it’s all over. Never have to think about it again.”

Angus nods, despite knowing that he doesn’t wholly understand, and that years may pass and he still may never grasp the enormity of the favor, the quest, the pain of Magnus’ stolen loss. But at least for now, flashing back a wan, assuaging smile and kicking his heels against the couch, he does know Taako well enough to know when he’s lying.

\-------------

Over the following years, Angus changes as such:

He takes jobs. He tries painting his nails like Magnus does but finds it chips too quickly with his hands in the dirt all the time. He grows more, until his legs ache a little, dully, for the span of about three years. He has his first kiss, and shortly after his second kiss with the same girl, and later his third with a different boy. He regains a reputation as a detective - perhaps not “world’s greatest” but enough for consistent work. He tries living in a small apartment in Neverwinter. He sells the apartment and moves back with Magnus in the course of two months. He tries new glasses. He learns three new languages. He welcomes the age of twenty with a little too much stolen wine on Merle’s front porch. He breaks his left arm on a police chase through Port Llast and doesn’t even think for a moment that his parents are somewhere in this city; wouldn't even know who he was if he crashed headlong into them and for once he truly feels absolutely nothing about that.

Magnus changes, too. Slower. In a way that is somewhat more insidiously creeping than Angus outgrowing his clothes seemingly overnight.

Gray hairs at his temples, slower out of bed to feed the dogs in the morning. Magnus carves himself a walking stick for their treks outside, which happen less often as the dawn breaks, like he’s stumbling after the trajectory of the sun as opposed to waiting to meet it.

As busy as Angus is, he makes a point to come home. To call it home, proudly and often. Tries to shoo Magnus out of the kitchen and take up the helm when it comes to running errands at the market or chasing after the dogs. But Magnus is too prideful, or perhaps he enjoys it too much, waving it all away with a laugh and a dismissive comment. Things are slower, but it becomes routine; as things always have. Magnus does not lift Angus up over his shoulders anymore. He does not sit as his bedside and stroke his head as Angus claws his way out of some nightmare. Time passes and this is the way things are now, in their home.

But, of course. There are others.

Taako comes by for dinner with Kravitz and waves for Magnus to get some of the nice gifted china out of the cabinet. Magnus heaves himself out of his chair, exhausted from a day of chopping wood and scrubbing the floors, and limps heavily towards the kitchen. Stumbles a bit on uneasy feet as he reaches up over his head and when he plods back to the table with dishes in hands, Taako’s face has gone pale and he seems to chew more at his lower lip than the piccata dish he’d arrived with.

And then, Taako stops showing up at all.

Angus tallies the days in an old, weather-worn journal. One which on its front page tallied the leaving population of the moon base. Taako makes phone calls followed by excuses for his absence. He drops off fresh vegetables from Kravitz’s garden when he knows Magnus is at the marketplace.

Angus returns home from a case. Magnus is not halfway down the path to welcome him. The dogs yap at the front door as Angus drags his suitcase inside but there is no Magnus to be found. Not waiting to crush him in an embrace. Not sprung up, bright-eyed and nearly stuttering over his excitement to see Angus back, with some news about the ducks or questions Angus can’t answer about his detective work. Rounding the corner, Angus finds him passed out on the couch, flame long-extinguished in the fireplace. His heart pounds in his ears.

“Magnus,” he says loudly, from the doorway. A small exhalation, but no response.

“Magnus,” he repeats, touching his shoulder this time. Magnus’ eyes snap open. He slowly, ploddingly, lets the world slot back into place around him.

“Ango, kid,” he rasps, voice wrinkly and soft from disuse. “I didn’t know -- you were gonna be home so soon.”

There is a half-empty glass of whisky on the table, abandoned woodworking projects on every surface, pillowed in sawdust left uncleaned. Angus suspects he hasn’t been to his actual bed down the hall since he departed nearly a week ago.

“Gosh, I missed you, little man,” he grunts as he pushes himself up. “How many days has it been?”

Angus invites himself over to Taako’s unannounced. Taako doesn’t even pretend to be perturbed; he waves Angus in, his hair twisted up in an impossible-looking pile atop his head and draped in something loose and lilac.

“Long time no see, buckaroo,” he chirps. “How’s detecting? Kill anyone yet?”

“That’s not my job,” Angus chides, as he politely slides off his shoes at the door.

“Doesn’t mean ya can’t dip in for a little fun,” Taako rejoinders with a wink, and tosses himself dramatically onto his couch. “So, boychick? You have news or what?”

Angus’ palms start to itch in a way they haven’t since he was a kid and he’d curl up on the floor with his knees to his chest and try and breath quietly into the crook of his elbow until the panic passed. He feels a bit cowed by Taako’s glamorous, impassive face. Cool and even and unfazed, even after all these years.

“I w-want to talk about Magnus,” he says, summoning up his bravery.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t notice anything different about him?”

Taako - for the briefest instant - looks stricken. Unhappy. But it passes like a hiccup and Taako is back to winding a lazy finger in his loose hair.

“He’s got a limp sometimes,” he answers, breezily.

“Yes,” Angus replies. “It’s not always bad, but it’s there.”

“You surprised? The way he treated his body all these years? He ain’t made of metal, call him ‘the hammer’ all you want.”

“There are other things,” Angus insists, unable to curtail the growing panic that raises the pitch and volume of his already nearly-tremorous voice. “He forgets words.”

“Well - he - he’s never been smart, kid,” Taako protests. “You know that.”

“No,” Angus continues, crossing around the small side table. “Simple words. He stammers, and forgets - ”

“Okay, so he’s,” Taako huffs, rolling his wrist in the air in front of them as he searches for words. “Whatever. Older, I guess. It ain't -- y’know, just life, kid, just the way it is.”

“He lost time in Wonderland,” Angus persists. “Didn’t you say that?”

“He got it back, doesn’t matter.”

“Physically, maybe. What if -- what if his mind -- ”

“Ango, baby, _mensch_ that you are,” Taako all but laughs, a little infuriatingly. “Don’t get all twisted up about what you don’t know.”

 _“You_ don’t know,” Angus snaps. “You don’t know because you won’t come around anymore!”

Angus thinks perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. Angus thinks perhaps he should have said it months ago.

“Bullshit,” Taako challenges coldly. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t, ever since he started slowing down. You - you don’t like seeing it, so you stopped.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he warns lowly, jabbing a warning finger in Angus’ direction. “I was there two weeks ago.”

“To drop off a crate and you didn’t come inside.”

“I’m a busy elf, Ango, don’t read into it.”

“You turned around, you - you _ran_ out of there. If you don’t think Magnus sees -- ”

“Ango. This is…” Taako steeples his fingers and exhales. Manages a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Maybe you don’t get it. We have always been this way, huh? Kissing and crying and shit, I’ll leave that up to you and your _papa_.”

The way Taako says that word so flippantly. New and sharp on his tongue. Excavating something Angus had thought he’d kept private, something that still feels exposed and almost undeserved after all these years. He feels mired in a dizzy sort of anger, one he resents feeling for Taako. Taako, whom he adores, admires, has always, always thought of as so strong --

“Say what you will, but you haven’t come inside for fifty nine days,” Angus steps in, somewhat literally. Crossing in front of the ottoman and standing where Taako cannot evade him. “I -- I can’t always be there with him and he needs - ”

“Needs what? Bubbaleh, he’s strong and dumb as an ox. And besides, he’s not dying, he’s what -- fifty? Even puny human lives - no offense, bucko - but even your lives don’t _end_ there.”

“S-stop it,” Angus plows over him before the words barely settle between them. He cups nervous hands around his neck and feels his heart hammering away and thinks, with a sudden pang of longing, when you feel like this usually you call Magnus.

“Even if -- even if he has decades left, you don’t leave him.” Angus insists, his voice raising.  “You don’t _leave_ him, Taako!”

“No one’s leaving,” Taako says, a little anemically, a barely-concealed panic twisting up his brow.

“Why won’t you -- w-why won’t you…”

The dam bursts. With a sudden, sharp inhalation that catches in his throat, Angus gasps and releases a loud, embarrassing sound, and is sobbing. Taako stands slowly, looking like he’d been slapped.

“You have to love him,” Angus keens, gripping at his stomach like he might be able to halt the heaving before it tears up and out of him. “B-because he raised me and I love him and when I’m not there he sleeps on the couch and I won’t let him be alone, Taako! I can’t always be there but I won’t l - let him…. be….”

His voice stutters over a sob that roils in his chest and spills out with a sharp gasp.

“You told me to take care of him, Taako,” he weeps. “I’m t-trying, I’m trying and I - I - ”

“Shh, honey,” Taako says, serious in a way he rarely manages. Brushing tears away from Angus’ cheeks with a well-manicured thumb, like Angus is still a frightened child, and he is. “Honey, you’ve done so well.”

“You made me promise.”

“And you have, Ango, you _do._ ”

Angus digs fingers into the cool satin of Taako’s shawl.

“He misses you. If you - if you love him you have to --” Angus hiccups.

“I know, bubbaleh, I know, you don’t have to say it,” Taako assures with no ire, no bite. His warm hands cradled against the back of Angus’ head gingerly. Angus sighs heavily, nearly going slack in Taako’s arms.

“You have to promise me,” Angus echoes, with Taako’s same conviction all those years ago. Taako kisses his temple and whispers something Angus does not hear, but feels, warm against his skin. Like he’ll pull away and the words will be etched there forever.

Not long after, Angus wakes up to the sound of Magnus laughing. It still stirs an instinctive swell of pride in him, carried over from younger days, taking such delight in coming up with the kind of jokes that Magnus might like. Blinking sleep away, he listens and there is another voice, higher and lighter, and louder.

“Up, lazybones,” Taako squawks indignantly, “I’ve been up since before the sun, and you’re gonna _kvetch_ about -- ”

By the time Angus emerges into the living room, Taako already has Magnus in his sweater, pulling a scarf around his throat lovingly.

“There you are, sleeping beauty,” Taako teases, waving Angus over. “Travelled all this way and not even a pot of coffee on the stove....”

“I didn’t know you were coming, we would’ve rolled out the red carpet,” Angus retorts, settling on the arm of the couch beside Magnus. Magnus looks as pleased as he does perplexed, tugging at the nice knot Taako had made in his scarf until it comes loose and messy again.

“Why’re you here, bud? Not that -- I mean, I’m happy! But - ”

“Jeezy chreezy, guess I really do have to do everything my self around here, huh?” Taako drawls, rolling his eyes. He leans over, eyes sparkling, voice a low, conspiratorial stage-whisper, “Reliable sources tell me, the ducks are back.”

“It’s early,” Magnus protests, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. “I didn’t even think to check. Are you - ”

“Certamente, my man,” Taako encourages. “Get up, get up!”

They bring coffee in ceramic jars, warm in their hands to fend off the early-Spring chill. Magnus slow and cautious with his walking stick, arm threaded through Taako’s. Taako at his best, careful and boisterous all at once. Taako who kindly acts like nothing has changed, this is who they’ve always been - hanging back and enjoying Magnus’ pace, a Taako who travels miles before sunrise, who accepts Magnus’ affection frequently and with less petulance.

Taako is right; however it is that he discerned it. Their little bodies paddling lazy circles around the circumference of the lake, green heads catching the light with the sort of organic metallic sheen that reminds Angus of the film on new summer leaves. The two of them settle on the bench Magnus built by the shore, both their heads bowed as they talk in a picture that looks almost like reverence, if Angus didn’t know the sort of vile nonsense they often giggled about.

Angus skips rocks and reads and affords them their privacy. They stay long enough that the sun starts to burn their eyes and their hats and scarves are shed. As Taako stands, Angus hears him assuring, in a voice with an uncharacteristic waver, soon, soon, I promise, I love you bub. I love you. I’ll see you.

Angus approaches and touches Magnus’ shoulder.

“Should we head back, papa?” he asks, and Magnus smiles up at him with a fervent sort of thankfulness that leaves Angus feeling a bit pinned. How much does Magnus know about what Angus had done, if he knows anything at all? Or is this his usual adoration, relief, etched out so clearly on his wide face? He recalls being younger and marveling at it, wanting to touch it, trace the lines of his easy smile and crinkled eyes. It’s hard to resist that urge even now.

“Ango,” Magnus says, and then nothing else. He seems unable to, words siphoned away. He reaches up and clasps Angus’ hand.

They make their way back to their home shoulder to shoulder, keeping pace, leaving footprints in the mud side by side.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Proud of my creation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103363) by [Dareandwriteit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dareandwriteit/pseuds/Dareandwriteit)
  * [His Grandfather's Knife](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11071983) by [Dareandwriteit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dareandwriteit/pseuds/Dareandwriteit)




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